What the Occupations Want

Wisdom Quarterly at Occupy Los Angeles, October, 2011

"Capitalism is Socialism for the 1 percent." A tiny desert pueblo became a megalopolis.

"Edward Sharpe gave an amazing performance full of love, light, and hope. I approached and told him his music was beautiful. He smiled, thanked, and hugged me. Occupy LA (OLA) is RADICAL in more ways than one!"

After the concert, it was on to class at the free Collective University. Topic du jour, "The Truth About the Economy." From college, it was off to temple, sitting in devotion and concentration in the holy tent.

The permanent Meditation Temple tent at Occupy LA

After church, it was power to the people rocking the mic. Not the people's mic (which comes on anytime anyone shouts "Mic check!")

Open mic poetry was followed by a theatrical performance piece, dancing to music, talking with like minded folks (there are folks of all minds available for talking), and committee meetings to stack at on all corners of America's largest Occupy encampment on par with Zuccotti Park.

Occupied L.A. Theatre & Company accepts all creative actions (Wisdom Quarterly).

What Does the Occupation Want?
Meetings are taking place. There is a search for a solution, presentations are being given, classes are being taught, and a free library is in operation. It's the society we were promised, stolen from us by the greed of corporations and the corruption of politicians, the brutality of police and the undermining of privacy by our many American spying apparatuses.

(ScamArtists33) Marianne Williamson gave a stirring speech at her weekly address on Oct. 20, 2011, reminding us how every movement is ridiculed before the change it effects is taken for granted. A massive labor march was approaching (Wisdom Quarterly).

Why do the committees vote as a group then take their consensus to the General Assembly? It is to BE the change we want to see in the world! At 7:30 every night on the south steps of City Hall in the pueblo de los angeles ("the city of angels"), Angeleno Occupiers discuss the issues. They vote, that is, they "take the temperature" as a group about what actions to take as a movement!

The Hug Deli serves fresh three-breath hugs with a two compliment limit. Too many thank yous hold up the line (Wisdom Quarterly).

"The people united will never be defeated." Everyone gets a chance to speak, everyone is heard, everyone is treated with respect. What do we want, what do we want? The world is looking at it! We want what we were lied to about and promised all along. We want the democracy we don't have in the "real" world.

"Members of Congress should be like members of NASCAR and wear the names of their sponsors across their bodies!" Power to the people (obrag.org).

This is Democracy Now! Democracy in action! This is not Woodstock. It's not a circus, carnival, or freak show. Of course the mainstream media has to portray it that way. The media is the message -- and the message is corporatism. News Corp, FOX, CIA/CNN, The Times, Lying Inc.

SEIU and other labor groups organized a massive march and approached the south steps where Marianne Williamson was speaking (Wisdom Quarterly).

Imagine a well organized, nonviolent movement. But just so you don't have to tax your imagination, ride the Metro into downtown and see it in real life. For the love of love, the love of democratic principles, the love of each other, see it. ALL are welcome. Every voice is needed.

No degree will save you when corporatists run the university.

Observe, listen, take classes with amazingly smart and sincere people, learn, and participate. An illiterate man taught me to share. A Ph.D. taught me to yawn while pretending to scratch my nose. A skateboarder taught me to spin a hula hoop with lights in it. A Buddhist taught me to regard every beggar as a best friend capable of giving an opportunity to practice generosity and make merit in the process.

Free energy technology exists. Corporations know it, government knows it, but the profit motive keeps anyone else from it. We're lucky to have gotten solar (Wisdom Quarterly).

It is important! It is our world. It is now (partly) running on solar power. There are designated "Waste Free Zones." Gardens are about to be built. Compost toilets are coming online. We need town criers, free kitchen help... imagine everything a FREE world would be if someone weren't trying to put profit before people, before the environment, before the planet, before personal growth, before liberation. Then come make it.

West Coast Occupy Venice in and Occupy LA stand in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street.

Love blossoms all across town from Venice Beach to Skid Row (Wisdom Quarterly).

How the occupation of Los Angeles began (SurvivalWithBushcraf)

Powerful Beyond Measure
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” - Marianne Williamson

• Occupy Los Angeles is Growing (laactivist.com)
• Ninety percent of Americans feel poor (RT.com)
  
• Supreme Court legalizes downloading music
  

30 Years of US War on Afghanistan - Why?

Wisdom Quarterly (ANALYSIS), RAWA.org, Uprising Radio.org

The Buddhas of Bamiyan were destroyed because the US (through the CIA and Pentagon) fomented an Arab-Islamic takeover of Afghanistan. This was not an act of the peaceful Pashtun, Tajiks, or Uzbeks tribes that have lived in the region for centuries before the CIA created, funded, and trained outside radical Islamists to fight imperial Soviet invaders.

In the place where the Buddha was likely born and grew up, the original garden of Lumbini and capital of Kapilavastu -- then a frontier province of greater India (Bharat), strong women still rise up in support of peace. Our invasions, motivated by theft, follow on the heels of other empires (British, Russian, Greek, Persian, Arabian).

What have these empires wanted? What does the American military-industrial complex really want that it is so willing to bring tremendous suffering? The answers are much more likely to be found at Invisible History (Crossing Zero) where American researchers have been investigating US involvement in Afghanistan for 30 years. Or from on-the-ground reporter and author Edward Girardet. Or, getting even closer to the ground, from Afghan women themselves.

Our involvement has been going on longer than that. The CIA cultivated the Taliban, feeding it by having vicious prisoners released from neighboring countries into Afghanistan to create, arm, and train Arab radicals -- called the Mujahideen (following a rare and extreme form of Islam called Wahhabism, while we're told that this is normal Islamic behavior) -- to covertly fight Russian invaders so we could invade and rule the region.


The Vanishing Point for the American Empire by Elizabeth Gould and Paul Fitzgerald. Until a few decades ago "Pakistan" was India and Afghanistan was the frontier. The US reassigned them to be part of the "geopolitical Middle East."

We were never in Afghanistan to help any but ourselves. We are only there to take it for ourselves -- no matter what our brothers in the Marines write home to tell us. The us in "we" does not really refer to the US.

It refers to our shadow government that has its own worldwide agenda. Without declaring war, US forces are committed in 130 countries. There are only 196 countries in the world, but the number is changing. We have been handed preposterous lies by the psychological operations arm of our own government about Islam and Afghanistan. And every night the "news" stirs the fear. If we do not challenge it and realize our common humanity, we back war and atrocities in our name and what libertarians have dubbed the "globalist agenda."

• How "they" control our minds and lives
• Listen to segment or entire program:
  

Three Decades in Afghanistan
Ten years ago today, and less than a month after the September 11th terrorist attacks, US forces began bombing one of the poorest, most war-torn countries in the world – Afghanistan. Ruled by the heavily oppressive and fundamentalist Pakistan-sponsored Taliban regime, Afghanistan was targeted for harboring Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. As the bombs rained down, the US supported the so-called Northern Alliance or United Front rebels as their ground support. These militants had a history of US support against the Soviet war when they called themselves the Mujahadeen, but most of them were just as brutally oppressive and fundamentalist as the Taliban. Today, many of these figures, rewarded for their fealty to American dollars... More

Supporters of RAWA Click here to find out how to help

Afghans (Pashtuns) are much safer now that the US created the Taliban to take care of the un-Islamic Soviet menace, replacing it with Christian crusaders in US uniforms.

Complexities Abound
Behind the children is the cave complex that made this remote region -- where the Buddha himself may have grown up (Kapilavastu) -- a famous Central Asian crossroads through the centuries as Buddhism moved from India (Rajgir) to Tajikistan, throughout the Greco-Bactrian empire (ancient Buddhist Greece), and then onto China and Siberia.

Parts of Greece were Buddhist before the Dharma made it to China. But no one is told that Buddhism thrived in ancient Greece, the home of Western civilization, or that it was displaced by Zoroastrianism and Islam after nurturing a new universalist Mahayana "sect" the world calls Christianity.

Read all about it thanks to researcher Holger Kersten (Jesus Lived India: His Unknown Life...). Christian traveler Nicolas Notovitch (The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ) was the first to discover the Tibetan records of St. Issa's life outside of Palestine with Jews in India. This may seem like "radical" information but, in fact, it is quite tamed and documented in ancient written records. Much more astounding are the exopolitics, Zoroaster as a titan (asura) opposing the deva sent by Sakka to protect the Dharma. Central Asia (around the Caucuses mountains, Sumeria, Mt. Sumeru, Mesopotamia, and Kashmir) is apparently very important in space (the heavens).

Wisdom Quarterly has brought forward this information and exposed this history before, but it often bears repeating.

Revolution Picnic (L.A. Rage and Communism)

Wisdom Quarterly

Many concert goers at L.A. Rising -- with Rage Against the Machine (RATM), Muse, Rise Against, Lauryn Hill -- consider the American Communist Party a revolutionary force.

The FBI and CIA, between yawns, might disagree. But immigrants from native Buddhist countries (Tibet, Siberia, Vietnam, Burma, Khmer Cambodia, Laos, etc.) are almost sure to be offended by any mention of a Red Army. For anyone who has suffered under Chinese and Southeast Asian dictators has a very bad image that has tainted Communism forever. But in the US, things are kept Revolutionary Lite.

Things are lightweight because the Revolutionary Communist Party is an infiltrated organization. ANSWER LA is very proactive. But the powerful message of fairness lives on. It's what motivates young adults, many of them diehard fans of RATM, have their heart in the right place:

Seeing the hypocrisy of American-style supercapitalism, they embrace the symbols and general ideas of the only force considered large enough to challenge the corporate-ruled, consumer imperative we are seduced into living by in the USA. Before discounting "Communists" altogether, there is one remarkable voice interested in freedom, social justice, and a better society: Michael Slate.

Is Rage Against the Machine Communist?

• LA Weekly on "LA Rising," Memorial Coliseum concert

Review: LA RISING with RATM and MUSE

(LA Times) Those concerned about the misguided energies of Rave kids, of the chaos that somehow manages to collide with mass-market electronic music at every turn, should be thankful that the Rage kids -- those in the Coliseum on Saturday night [July 30, 2011] who are obsessed with the collected music and ideas of Rage Against the Machine -- haven’t yet combusted in the streets of L.A.

Revolution can be a Picnic

Dan Bluemel (L.A. Activist)

KPFK radio host Michael Slate [spoke] at the Revolutionary Communist Party’s 2010 Anti-Fourth of July picnic held in Echo Park, Los Angeles. While most Los Angeles residents celebrated the Fourth of July by throwing parties, attending fireworks displays, and expressing their national pride via red-white-and-blue accoutrement[s], another group had a different theme: revolution. The Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) hosted an “Anti-Fourth of July Picnic” in Echo Park [on July 4, 2010]. It was one of many held around the country. People gathered to eat food, listen to speakers, as well as participate in games. More

1. SHOW 7/22/2011-Pelican Bay, Abortion
2. SHOW 7-15-2011-War Neocons, DSK's victim, Pelican Bay strike
3. SHOW 7/8/2011-Amanda Marcotte, Pelican Bay Hunger Strike
4. SHOW 7/1/2011-Afghanistan, Pelican Bay Hunger Strike
5. SHOW 6/24/11-PZ Myers, Filmmaker David Zeiger, Grammy protests
6. SHOW 6/17/11-California Prisons, Anti-Abortion Billboards
7. SHOW 6/10/2011-Ethan McCord and Keith Knight

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